Rāvaṇa’s Solicitation

Rāvaṇa came to the Ashokavana in the deep of the night, in all his majesty, to press his suit upon Sītā once again, and Hanumān, hidden in the branches above, watched the whole confrontation, and it is one of the great scenes of the epic, a clash of wills between the mightiest of the demons and the most steadfast of women, in which the helpless captive proves stronger than the lord of the three worlds.

He came arrayed in all his splendour and his power, the ten-headed king, magnificent, terrible, adorned, the conqueror of gods, and he displayed himself before her in the full glory of his greatness, and he made his appeal, and his appeal was a mingling of temptation and menace, of offered glory and implied threat, all designed to break at last the will that had resisted him so long.

He offered her everything. Be my queen, he urged her, chief among all my queens, mistress of Lankā, of all its gold and all its power. What is Rāma to you now? A powerless exile, a wanderer in the forest, stripped of his kingdom, unable even to protect you, who could not prevent your taking and cannot accomplish your rescue. He is nothing; he has nothing; he can do nothing for you. Forget him.

Turn to me, who am the lord of the three worlds, before whom the gods themselves tremble, who can give you every splendour and every pleasure and every power that exists. Be mine, willingly, and share my greatness; let go of your hopeless devotion to a broken exile, and be queen of the mightiest king in all creation. He heaped before her the whole treasure of his power and his wealth, all the temptation that the greatest king of the age could offer, urging her to abandon her lost husband and rise to be his consort.

And when temptation seemed to have no effect, he mingled it with menace, reminding her of her helplessness, of the length of her captivity, of the demon guards, hinting at the darker fate that awaited continued refusal, pressing upon her the hopelessness of her position, the folly of clinging to a devotion that could only bring her suffering, the wisdom of yielding to the inevitable while yielding could still be rewarded.

And Sītā answered him, and her answer is one of the glories of the epic, for the wasted captive, ringed by her tormentors, wholly in the power of the being who addressed her, answered the lord of the three worlds not with fear, not with pleading, not with the least tremor of weakness, but with a contempt so complete and a dignity so absolute that it reduced all his power and all his glory to nothing.

She would not even face him directly, the tellers say, but placed a single blade of grass upon the ground between them, and addressed her words as if to the grass, so as not to dignify the demon with her direct regard, a gesture of the most eloquent contempt, treating the mightiest king of the age as beneath her notice, as something to be addressed only through an intermediary blade of grass. And through this contempt she spoke her defiance.

Do not imagine, she told him, that your power or your wealth or your glory is anything to me. Compared to the virtue of Rāma, all your greatness is as dust, as this blade of grass, less than nothing. You call him a powerless exile; you do not understand what he is; and you will understand it, to your ruin, when he comes. For he will come.

He will cross your ocean and break your city and destroy you and all your demon host, and he will take me back with honour, and your golden Lankā will be ash and your ten heads will roll in the dust, and all this because of the folly you have committed in taking me. You have not captured a prize; you have embraced your own destruction; you have signed the doom of your city and your race by this one act of lust and pride.

My heart belongs to Rāma, wholly and forever, in life and beyond it, and no power of yours can take it or turn it or touch it. I would not be your queen if you offered me the sovereignty of all the worlds. Release me, and beg Rāma’s forgiveness, and you may yet save something from the ruin you have called down; keep me, and you and all your kingdom will perish. That is my answer, demon, and it will not change though you keep me here till the end of the world.

It was magnificent, and it was fearless, and it was spoken by a captive to her captor, by the helpless to the all-powerful, and its power lay precisely in that: that Sītā had nothing, could do nothing, was wholly in Rāvaṇa’s grip, and yet she was not conquered, could not be conquered, met his whole power with a contempt that his whole power could not touch. She had no weapon but her defiance, and it was enough, for it was the one thing he could not overcome. He could imprison her body; he could not bend her will.

He could threaten and tempt and menace; she answered with contempt. All his greatness broke against her steadfastness like a wave against a rock, and the rock did not move.

Let us understand what the story is showing us in this confrontation, for it is one of its deepest points. Rāvaṇa has every kind of power: strength, wealth, sovereignty, the conquest of gods, the mastery of the three worlds. Sītā has no power at all, in the worldly sense; she is a captive, wasted, guarded, helpless. And yet in the confrontation it is Sītā who is strong and Rāvaṇa who is, at the root, weak, for all his power cannot get him the one thing he wants, and her powerlessness cannot be made to yield the one thing she guards.

This is the story’s great reversal of what strength and weakness mean: that the truest strength is not the power to compel others but the power to remain oneself, unbroken, faithful, whole, under every compulsion; and that the truest weakness is not helplessness but the ungoverned wanting that makes even the mighty a slave to what they cannot have.

Rāvaṇa, lord of the three worlds, is enslaved to his lust for a woman who despises him; Sītā, his captive, is free in the only way that finally matters, mistress of the one thing no one can take from her. And Rāvaṇa left the grove that night defeated, as he was always defeated in these encounters, raging, having gained nothing, having been answered with contempt by the one being in all his conquered worlds that he could not conquer.

And Hanumān, watching from the tree, had seen it all, and his heart was full, for he had seen now with his own eyes the full measure of Sītā’s greatness, the unbreakable fidelity, the fearless defiance, the strength that endured everything and yielded nothing.

He understood now, more deeply than any report could have told him, what manner of queen it was that Rāma had lost, and why the whole world was being moved to recover her, and he was more resolved than ever to bring her comfort and to carry to Rāma the news that his Sītā lived and had kept faith and waited, unbroken, for her rescue.

He had only to find the moment, now, to reveal himself to her without terror, and to give her the sign that would prove him Rāma’s true messenger, and bring, at last, the first ray of hope into the long darkness of her captivity.